Balancing Technology and Experience for Child Care Providers

When we set out to design tend.ly, we thought how the app feels to providers and parents was just as important as what the app does. We talked to providers and parents at child care environments of all sizes to figure out how to build an app that gave parents the information they wanted while not getting in the way of providers’ attention to children. With an emphasis on design and user experience, we hope that tend.ly delivers on both of these important needs.

Here are some elements of tend.ly that are heavily influenced by our discussions with providers and parents:

Moment Entry: Besides being cool, the fly-out menu for entering moments allows the provider to quickly enter the most common moments (diaper, nap, food, photos) while having one-tap access to the rest of the tend.ly moment types (curriculum, announcements). The moment entry screen itself is optimized for data entry–you just enter any relevant notes, confirm the times, and select one (or more) kids to which the moment should apply.

Timeline: tend.ly is not just a replacement for daily paper summary sheets. It’s a platform that allows parents to see all the valuable moments that occur throughout the day while their children are in the care of their chosen provider. We chose to mimic the timelines of popular apps like Facebook and Instagram for their familiarity and storytelling feel.

Daily Emails: Parents love daily summary emails that recap the tactical parts of their child’s day (feedings, naps, etc.) with the added color of photos, comments, lesson recaps, and announcements. We wanted to make sure that our daily emails pulled together all this information in a concise format while still accommodating the dynamic nature of every child’s day.

We expect design to heavily influence many of the features in the tend.ly platform in the coming months and years. We believe that our child care app should make your day care business stand out and really reflect the care that makes you unique!